PDEng position Decision Tool for Determination of Failure Mechanism

Although maintenance tries to prevent them, failures regularly occur in practice. And while the number of different failure modes in the huge range of systems used in industry is nearly infinite, the number of basic failure mechanisms underlying these failures is only limited. However, as this mechanism acts on the material level, a system or process operator or maintenance engineer normally lacks the knowledge to assess the proper mechanism that caused a certain failure. But, a precise identification of the mechanism yields considerable benefits in two ways:

Knowing the failure mechanism makes the root cause analysis of the failure rather easy and thus enables to quickly find a durable solution for the problem;
Correct registration of the failure mechanism in the computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), which is now typically done by entering a failure type / failure mode / cause or selecting from a drop-down menu, largely improves the potential of RAMS analyses performed with the collected failure data.

In this project a decision scheme and tool (e.g. app for mobile device) will be developed that assist (process) operators in assessing the appropriate failure mechanism. The final deliverable of this project will be a validated decision tool to determine the failure mechanism, preferably also implemented as an app on a mobile device. In addition, a report describing the method and a user guide will be delivered. The reporting language will be English.
Form and organization of the project

The project will be organized as a PDEng (Professional Degree in Engineering) project in the Maintenance PDEng program at the University of Twente. This means that a candidate (with an MSc degree) will be appointed at the university for two years. In this period he/she will do one year of courses, in this case dedicated to maintenance, and will perform a research (design assignment) for one year. As the student takes the courses, he/she will be aware of the current state of the art in maintenance, and will be able to report that knowledge and apply it in the research project. Supervision will be provided by university staff, as well as by the companies involved in this project: Nedtrain, Sabic and Sitech, as well as the NLDA / Ministry of Defence.

Deadline Application: 04-10-2015

Further details:
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